Dougarie Estate has embarked on an ambitious Green Network project to develop connectivity across the diverse habitats it manages. In partnership with the Nature Restoration Fund, this initiative has seen the estate plant 9,000m of hedgerows in 2023 with the intention of increasing biodiversity across the estate's lowland areas. The longer term aim is to further develop these corridors in 2024 with a further 6,000m of hedgerow planting planned. The estate is committed to more sustainable, low carbon, high conservation farming techniques, underpinned by its organic accreditation. This complements all the work the estate does in partnership with Wildlife Estates Scotland (WES) and the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT).
The estate's primary aim is to continue to increase biodiversity across the estate, particularly in agricultural areas where it believes the greatest improvements can be made. They believe that hedgerows provide a wide range of benefits including ecological, environmental, and agricultural benefits as well as enhancing the natural beauty of the landscape.
The estate wanted to link habitats across the estate to provide early and late season forage, shelter, and habitat for a range of species. The creation of these hedgerows will create and link valuable habitats for pollinators, farmland birds, and small mammals, helping to reverse their decline where appropriate. They are committed to the use of multi-species hedges, which promote biodiversity and provide a variety of habitat structures, especially when combined with hedgerow trees. In addition, they will provide beneficial habitat for a range of wildfowl species, as well as supporting many of the farmland bird species that they support during the 'hungry gap' through the use of farmland feeders along their hedgerows. The provision of additional hedgerows on the estate will continue to provide a hospitable habitat for species such as the Yellowhammer, House Sparrow, and even the Grey Partridge, which has disappeared from the island due to lack of habitat.
The main challenge they faced was finding the right contractors to carry out the work, given the constraints of location and cost. There were no local contractors with the capacity to complete the work, so mainland contractors had to be sought. Timely delivery of materials was difficult due to issues with the reliability of the ferry service and finding accommodation for the workforce given the seasonal constraints on availability.
Due to their organic status, the estate was restricted in how they could best control weeds within the fenced areas, which meant that the hedges had to be weeded by hand and the dry conditions between April and June did not help the first year's growth of the hedgerow plants.
The estate has modeled the potential carbon sequestration potential of the hedgerows and believes that once established they will sequester around 35,522kg CO2e per annum, which the estate will monitor as part of its carbon audit commitments as part of the island's farmer-led climate change action group.
The estate has recorded a biodiversity baseline of the area it has used to plant hedgerows and this will be monitored over the lifetime of the hedgerows to demonstrate how the provision of shade and cover will provide a more temperate climate for birds, mammals, insects, and especially pollinators on the farm, given the global issues surrounding climate change. They are already seeing the effects of climate change on the west coast of Arran where wild, wet, and windy weather has become more destructive, and they see the establishment of hedgerows as an important part of maintaining good land management practices, including facilitating good livestock performance and aiding climate resilience. As well as benefiting livestock, the provision of enhanced cover plays an important role in protecting soils and preventing soil loss and erosion. Their efforts to plant hedgerows contribute to climate change mitigation, albeit at a local level.
Dougarie Estate is a member of the Net Zero Arran Group and Arran Climate Change benchmarking group, and they sought advice from other public bodies that are involved with land management on the island, especially given the benefits that this will bring in terms of carbon sequestration. The project has been extremely well received by the local community who have been supportive of the visual impact that it will create in the longer term as well as the biodiversity benefits. Further to this, their work has stimulated other land managers both on the island and those visiting to think about what they can do at a localized level on their own holdings.
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